The National Geographic Magazine
in solid construction, in improvement of the
surrounding farm lands, and in farsighted
investments in railroads and shipping lines.
That money kept the city growing.
The ten years from 1860 saw the first Pony
Express rider arrive from Missouri and the
linking of the tracks of the Central Pacific
and Union Pacific Railroads at Promontory,
Utah. As the golden spike was set to hold
the final rail, a cannon was fired in San Fran
cisco Harbor. That was the night the city
paraded with illuminated transparencies an
nouncing: "San Francisco Annexes the United
States!"
In round figures, the census tells the story:
1870, population 150,000. 1880: 234,000.
1890: 299,000. 1900: 343,000. The city
had spread out across Twin Peaks toward
Ocean Beach. The harbor was the busiest
on the Pacific coast. Trade, manufacturing,
agriculture-all were flourishing.
On the Eve of Disaster
But the city still found time to enjoy itself.
The greatest actors and opera stars of their
time bowed to San Francisco audiences in
those last decades of the 19th century. Fine
restaurants and magnificent hotels flourished.
In a short half-century, sleepy Yerba Buena
had become one of the great cities of the
world. There seems little doubt that most
San Franciscans went to sleep on the night
of April 17, 1906, content with their city
and their lot.
It is perhaps true that a city, like a nation
or even a human being, must know agony
before it can know greatness. San Francisco,
in the six decades following the discovery of
gold, had known boom and bust, glory and
privation. But stark terror had never visited
the city until that April morning 50 years
ago. With that dawn came a three-day horror
which was to prove the mettle of the city of
the Argonauts and its 400,000 dwellers.
The first earthquake tremor ripped from
the north, along the San Andreas fault, just
after 5 a.m. It and the second shock lasted
a total of less than a minute. Slight tremors
were to follow all that day, but the death
knell of the city had sounded in those first
terrible 60 seconds.
The temblor itself, one of the strongest and
most destructive ever recorded, did damage
enough. It left the new $7,000,000 city hall
a twisted skeleton, stripped of brick and mor
tarwork. It tumbled homes and factories and
office buildings into shapeless heaps of rubble
from which came the terrified cries of trapped
and injured people. And then, to seal the
city's doom, it broke both gas and water mains.
Nearly 90 percent of San Francisco's build
ings were made of wood. There were gas
fires burning in kitchen ranges that morning.
And when Brig. Gen. Frederick Funston,
acting commander of the Army's Pacific Divi
sion, leaped from his bed on Nob Hill and
rushed out into the street, he saw a dozen
small fires already snapping at the ruins of
the business section and the South of Market
residential district.
By noon, when General Funston had turned
out his 1,700 regulars to help fight the blaze
and keep order, the entire business district
was one solid sheet of flame. And the fire
was moving inexorably toward Russian Hill,
Telegraph Hill, Chinatown, and North Beach.
By 3 o'clock, when Mayor Eugene E.
Schmitz called to order an emergency Com
mittee of Fifty amid wrecked buildings, the
flames were in command. Fire hoses hung
limp and useless from empty hydrants. Mayor
Schmitz ordered police and troops to "shoot
to Kill any and all persons found engaged in
Looting or in the Commission of Any Other
Crime," and called for dynamite. If there
was no water to put out the fire, corridors of
blasted buildings might stop its spread.
Fortune in U. S. Mint Endangered
That afternoon a sea of fire had swept
around the United States Mint, well out Mar
ket Street toward Twin Peaks. Inside, a
handful of loyal employees sloshed what water
they could get on sashes and framework of
the stone building, where $200,000,000 in cur
rency and specie jammed the vaults. Down
town the 18-story Call Building, one of the
city's tallest, seemed to go all at once. Flames
burst simultaneously from a hundred windows.
Then there was only a pillar of fire and a
rising column of smoke.
That night in San Jose, 40 miles to the
south, incredulous men read newspapers by
the light of the flames reflected in the sky.
There was no relief the next day. The
Navy's Pacific Squadron steamed into the
Bay, and bluejackets poured ashore to fight
the flames and guard the smoking ruins. They
brought food and medicine for the quarter
million harried people who had fled across the
hills to take refuge in the Presidio and Golden
Gate Park. But the fire crept steadily up
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